There are common perceptions that organizations have about open source — but  these perceptions also vary a lot. This is especially the case when it comes to describing what organizations’ role in open source development should be, as well as the best way to take advantage of this ongoing explosion in open source tools and their availability. (Call it a renaissance, if you will).

What open source means — and what it should mean — is a main topic of this episode of this The New Stack Makers podcast, recorded during the Open Source Summit in San Diego, with the recently released results of the survey the second annual survey “Open Source Programs in the Enterprise.” Dirk Hohndel, vice president, chief open source officer, VMware, discussed his take on the results and what they meant for VMware, which  co-sponsored the survey in partnership with The Linux Foundation’s TODO Group.

The survey results also served to quantify many of the operations Hohndel has made during his work with the open source community. Given that enterprises increasingly describe themselves as software companies, a key consideration is to determine how software's role specific to your organization. Or more specifically,  Hohndel said,  most businesses view software as "key to what they do."